5 Premium WordPress Plugins That Are Worth Every Penny

Many people are blogging “just for fun,” but others use blogs to power up and sustain their business.

And the best way to make your business grow faster is undoubtedly an investment.

I’ve made my first investment at age eleven. I was wasting my life up until then. – Warren Buffett.

There are tons of things you can invest your money in: a coaching program, your blog design, advertising, powerful hosting, etc. Invested into right things, money you will get back to you. That’s actually what a positive ROI is. However, there’s one resource you put into your business, which never comes back. It is your time.

Today I want to show you a few premium plugins that, in my opinion, are absolutely worth their cost, have a high ROI and save your most precious resource: time.

I’d like to start with this amazing plugin because it's kinda special for me. It was the first WordPress plugin, that I’ve paid for and, believe me, I never had a chance to regret it. PopUp Domination has skyrocketed my email list growth.

I know that many people hate seeing popup email forms. Haters gonna hate. Popups work like a charm when you need to convert your visitors into email subscribers.

According to Noah Kagan, the average conversion rate for email pop-ups is 1.66%. This means that you can send new emails directly to your Mailchimp, Aweber, iContact, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor or Get Response email lists.

However, if you’re using a different Mailing List Provider, you can still use PopUp Domination with your Mailing List thanks to HTML Form Code option. You can also send new opt-ins directly to your email address and import them into your mail service manually if you need.

You can send new emails directly to your Mailchimp, Aweber, iContact, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor or Get Response email lists.

However, if you’re using a different Mailing List Provider, you can still use PopUp Domination with your Mailing List thanks to HTML Form Code option. You can also send new opt-ins directly to your email address and import them into your mail service manually if you need.

PopUp Domination allows you to easily to set-up what triggers the popup display. Popup can be shown:

On Website page load (display delay time can be set up)

When mouse leaves the browser viewport

When user reaches the bottom of the page

When the user tries to leave the page

When visitors selects an object (i.e. images, buttons, links etc)

When user clicks on a small tab on the side of the page.

When user clicks button in the bar.

All popups can be shown with fade-in and slide effects.

4) A/B Testing and Analytics

This plugin offers you great opportunities on A/B testing different content, templates and styles. Spend more time on split testing and you will get better conversion results.

And with the analytics features, included in this plugin, you will be able to see which pages and popups are getting the best results. This will help you come up with the best offers and content on your website in the future.

Pricing and Alternatives

PopUp Domination pricing starts from $47 for a single-site license. The plugin has an affiliate program, powered by ClickBank.

There are a lot of premium alternatives, and it’s, actually, great. Competition is the driving force. But the one I see other bloggers raving about today is OptinMonster

In the days, when social media marketing is getting more and more important for almost every business, hundreds of social sharing plugins have appeared. And around 99% of them are social sharing buttons.

Positioned as a social sharing plugin as well, TweetDis, however, gives you a creative opportunity to get your posts shared on Twitter in addition to your standard Twitter shares.

This plugin adds eye-catchy tweetable quote boxes to your blog posts and pages, and they can be shared apart from the whole content. The trick here is that whenever such quote is “clicked to tweet”, a tweet will be automatically generated including a link to your content page. This brings more shares to your content and drives more traffic from Twitter.

Here’s how it works:

The quotes alone are great for your content. They are perfect text-breakers, they add authority to your content, when you use the words from celebrities or from influencers in your niche. If duly shaped, quote boxes are instantly noticeable, because they always stand apart from your plain text.

What this plugin can proudly boast is a number of great-looking quote box designs. In combination with tweetability, this works like hell to get your content shared.

This plugin has 11 quote box templates with text only. But the most outstanding feature it offers is 5 “Authority Templates”, which include the author’s name and image in them.

The quotes alone are great for your content. They are perfect text-breakers, they add authority to your content, when you use the words from celebrities or from influencers in your niche. If duly shaped, quote boxes are instantly noticeable, because they always stand apart from your plain text.

TweetDis can also turn any part of your plain text into a tweetable link.

2) Flexible Tweet Text

Apart from the text of the quote itself, you can set up the URL to be included in your tweet. This can be a link to the page, where a tweetable quote is embedded, or any other custom URL you want to link to.

Also you can add your, or any other Twitter handle to go with the quote with RT, by or via prefixes and add any additional text to engage Twitter audience.

Finally, you can replace all the automatically generated tweet text with any other. This comes in especially handy when the quote is too long for Twitter and you have to shorten it.

3) Tweetable Images

You may wonder what’s the use of this feature, when you can easily make all your images tweetable with SumoMe Image Sharer. However with Image Sharer and other similar plugins you will not be able to add text to go with a tweet with an image. And with TweetDis you images can be tweeted with a message, you want to spread.

Pricing and Alternatives

Pricing starts from $37 for a single-site license. The product has an affiliate program, powered by ClickBank.

Click to Tweet plugin by Todaymade is a free alternative to TweetDis. It offers you one quote box design and only allows you to change your Twitter handle in its settings.

You can also use an online Clicktotweet service to generate tweetable links for your content.

I’d like to let you know of another tool, which helps you grow your email following. It uses the concept of content upgrades to convert your readers into email subscribers.

With content upgrades, you give away some bonus material to your readers. In exchange they have to give you their email address. I consider it a fair deal. To get something valuable one must give something in return. At the end of this “deal” everyone is happy: your reader gets some useful material while you get a new subscriber.

Probably the best example of successful content upgrade strategy is demonstrated by Brian Dean at his Backlinko blog. The man has managed to instantly increase his conversion rate by 785% in just one day.

Brian puts a content upgrade link in almost every of his posts. Here’s a fine example:

And whenever someone takes interest in such bonus material and clicks the link, a pop-up appears, asking to enter an email address to use this material.

You can use various content types as a content upgrade: checklists, PDF versions of your earlier posts, videos, audio recordings, samples, ebooks. Actually anything that relates to the content of your article and presents value to your reader.

Content upgrades can be easily created and managed with Content Upgrades PRO plugin. Here is what it offers:

1) A Number of Pop-Up and Box Designs

To add more style to your content upgrade links you can wrap them in fancy boxes

2) Integration with the Most Popular Mailing List Providers

The plugin works with MailChimp, Aweber, GetResponse and Ontraport.

Alternatively you can send you new subscribers directly to your email contact list and import this list to your favorite email service.

3) Ease of Use

You can create many content upgrades and then easily embed them into any part of your posts or pages with a few clicks. Just select the text you want to turn into content upgrade link in your WordPress editor, click the plugin icon, select the content upgrade and fancy box from the drop-down menu and that’s it.

You can also use image as a link to your bonus material.

4) A/B Testing Pop-Up Headlines

With Content Upgrades PRO you will be able to A/B test the headlines in your pop-ups to find the most engaging one. For every content upgrade you can add up to three additional headlines and observe their performance. These headlines will be randomly shown to your visitors in pop-ups.

You will see the effectiveness of each headline in making people give their email address in exchange to your bonus content. After testing, you can pick the winner headline.

Pricing and Alternatives

Pricing starts from $37 for a single-site license. The product as an affiliate program, powered by ClickBank.

LeadPages with their LeadBoxes are a nice alternative to use content upgrade strategy. However with the cheapest plan of $35 per month, some online entrepreneurs can find it quite pricey.

So if you’re running a small online business you can try Content Upgrades PRO. It has also got a free version with limited features.

Social Locker is another plugin, which will bring you more social shares. Additionally it can grow your social network following.

This plugin uses a concept, which is very similar to content upgrade strategy. The difference is that it exchanges your bonus content to a social share or sign-in instead of an email.

You can offer your visitors some bonus material, or maybe a discount, which they can only access after sharing your content or opting-in via one of the most popular social networks.

Here’s how it looks on the page:

All you have to do add such locker is select the part of your content you want to lock, click the plugin’s icon in WordPress editor and you’re done!

Here’s what Social Locker has to offer:

1) Major Social Networks support

Social Locker offers your readers to share content on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, or to opt-in via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn

2) 5 Great Locker Designs

You can choose from the 5 available designs for your lockers

You can also create your own locker designs with StyleRoller addon (at additional cost).

3) Sign-in Locker

When your reader signs in, you get grants access to the user's contact data. With this social data you may

Register the user on our website (create an account)

Subscribe the user to your account on Twitter

Subscribe the user to your account on LinkedIn

Subscribe the user to your YouTube channel

Knowing your audience, you can engage with them personally on their social pages.

4) Interactive Element

The box, created in Social Locker, is fun to interact with, thanks to the animated social share button “hatches.” Looks really attractive at mouseover.

5) Analytics

The Social Locker plugin has a built-in analytics tool. You can track how users interact with the lockers and easily identify which lockers on which pages are out-performing and what you can change to improve your results.

You can also send the statistics data from the Social Locker directly to your Google Analytics account.

Pricing and Alternatives

The regular license if offered at $25. A free version with a limited set of features is available.

You can join the plugin’s affiliate network and get 30% from each sale.

Social Share & Locker Pro plugin can be quite a good alternative. It includes both nice social buttons and social locker option.

The style, beauty and visibility of your social sharing buttons have a great impact on the general impression of your website or blog as well as on the number of social shares you get.

With hundreds of plugins for WordPress, both free and premium, which offer you social sharing buttons, Monarch is in a league of its own. Elegant themes really came up with an Elegant social sharing plugin.

This plugin is relatively new. It manages both social sharing and social following in a stylish and effective manner.

Let’s see what’s so special about this plugin.

1) 5 Locations to Place Your Social Sharing Buttons

Most plugins don’t give you more than a couple of regions to place your sharing buttons. Monarch offers you 5 targeted regions where you can place your social buttons. These regions have the highest probability of getting noticed and thus clicked.

Floating Sidebar

Above or Below Content

On Images & Videos

Automatic Pop-Up

Automatic Fly-in

While instantly visible, buttons are unobtrusive and don’t distract your visitors from reading.

As for popups and fly-ins you can choose when to show them to your readers: on a timed delay, at the bottom of a post, after commenting, upon percent of scroll, after purchasing and after inactivity.

2) 20+ Social Networks Supported

Actually 24. You can add or remove them from the share bars as you wish.

3) 5 Hover Designs

Unfortunately I cannot show you the awesome hover designs of the Monarch’s buttons in a static image. But you can check it out yourself here. I’m not a fine art expert, but, Gosh, I love their style.

There’s no need to hide your sharing buttons for mobile display. Monarch's sharing icons are fully responsive and look great at all mobile devices. Buttons will be moved to an unobtrusive expandable widget at the bottom of the screen.

Pricing and Alternatives

With all these awesome features and really outstanding elegant design, Monarch has probably got one disadvantage: it will cost you $89 per year. However this price does not only include one single plugin. You will also get access to 87 premium WordPress themes. Add here 5 more plugins and the opportunity to use all Elegant Themes’ products on an unlimited number of sites and $89 suddenly don’t seem that pricey.

As well as all other plugins, mentioned here, Elegant Themes offer the affiliate program.

The best free alternative which can stand in one line with Monarch, for my liking, is Share for SumoMe. Although you may want to upgrade to Share Pro to remove branding and get access to additional features.

Over to you

Do you have some positive or negative experience using these plugins, that you’d like to share? Or maybe you want to let us know of other cool WordPress plugins that are worth every penny. The comments are all yours.

And one last important notice: Don’t forget to share this post!

Tim Soulo is the head of marketing at Ahrefs (a musthave toolset for SEOs and internet marketing professionals) and he occasionally updates his good-looking personal blog called BloggerJet.com

Reader Interactions

Comments

I’ve been totally happy myself with Popup Domination. It’s been with me for sooooo long and I still got to use it the other day because I needed to create a custom popup haha.Dennis Seymour recently posted…Here’s How Social Media Affects Your SEO

The one I feel is missing is Gravity Forms. It makes creating forms for your site such a breeze. The forms look amazing! If you are a developer it has a ton of add-ons and integrations so you can make pretty much anything. I have created some really in depth surveys, shopping carts, and contact forms using the plugin.

Like I said, great list though! I did not know about the content upgrades plugin. Really neat alternative to Lead Pages or similar products.

Hi Tim,
Good to see you here on Sue’s blog and thanks for these recommendations

As you know, I have TweetDis and have written about it. It’s doing quite well on my blog right this moment.

I also have used social locker and even wrote on how to use it to make money. Yes I made some people with a silly strategy I developed with that plugin and the developer gave my readers a huge discount on it.

I have been waiting for the final version of your content upgrade pro. I’ll have to check it this moment 😉

I know of 4 plugins here. I’ll now have to checkout and discover Monarch by Elegant Themes.

Very helpful post: I can see how each of these would be awesome for list-building. I use LeadPages which allows capability to do some of these things but not as elegantly. Monarch seems a much better alternative to the free social sharing system I’m using; I’ve also been considering Social Warfare.

I’m on the hunt for a plug-in to display videos without subscribing to vimeo or wistia. The basic plug-in is very plain and kind of ugly. If anyone hears of anything I’d love to be told.

These popups all seem pretty amazing. I’ve seen most of them around on different blogs actually but I’m not in a position to spend money on them quite yet.
I will definitely invest in one or two of these once I get some sales!
Great insight into the premium world of plugins!
Esteban

I am Areesha Noor, First time visit your blog though Enstine blog. I bookmarked this blog for further usage.
Any way Great list of Top WordPress plugin, in which I am using social Locker plugin in my one site and it help me a lot to gain share and like. I am happy with this plugin. Other plugin have also great feature, I will check all these plugin,

I’ve been considering implementing content upgrades, but I’m not ready to invest in something like Lead Pages. I hear so much about it, but as you said, it’s a little pricey. Thanks for sharing the Content Pro plugin.Tiffany recently posted…How to Disable Right Click on WordPress

Hello Tim, your provided list of premium WordPress plugins sound great. A huge number of WordPress plugins available that can be useful for enhancing our WordPress blog. We should take advantages of such WordPress plugins to enhance our WordPress blog with impressive features.